Center for Inquiry–Tampa Bayis
proud to present:

Enshrining Religious Privilege:
How the Religious Right is Undermining Secular Society with the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act

with
Nicholas Little
Legal Director, Center for Inquiry

The Center for Inquiry’s
new Legal Director, Nick Little, will speak in Tampa about the
effects of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, and the legal actions
CFI has taken and will take in defending secularism. Do you know what the
religious right and the government are doing to undermine separation of church
and state? Might you take an interest in defending your beliefs from ongoing
diminishment? Find out!

Nick’s focus
will be RFRA—the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—because it is where the big
legal battles are these days, rather than the frequently heard debates over
school prayer and religious displays on public property. The act was passed
unanimously by the House, with major backing from Progressive groups like
Americans United and ACLU, as a protection for religious groups from unfair
attacks by the government. Unfortunately, it has become what some people always
thought it would be—a sword to win special rights for religious groups. It was
the basis of the Contraception Mandate brief written by the Center for Inquiry,
as well as many other current suits.

About the speaker

Nick Little is the Legal Director of the Center for Inquiry, based out of
our Washington, DC office. Prior to working for CFI, Nick was an attorney with
the DC-based law firm Howrey, LLP, specializing in international and domestic
antitrust matters. Since college, Nick has been involved with both organized
party and issue based political and social activism.

As both an
undergraduate and doctoral student at the University of Oxford, Nick became
closely involved with the British Labour Party, becoming a branch officer.
Disappointed with the strictures and compromises that came with party political
activism, Nick moved away from a purely political career, and focused instead
on issue based activism, in the areas of international human rights and LGBT
rights.

After moving to
the United States, Nick worked in the finance industry in Philadelphia. In the
aftermath of September 11th, 2001, Nick returned to education full time,
winning a scholarship to Vanderbilt University Law School. At that institution,
he focused on Constitutional Law, and, coming from a country with an established
church, took particular interest in the role of the First Amendment and the
interplay between religion and politics in the United States.

Upon graduation,
Nick worked in DC representing Fortune 500 companies in antitrust matters,
often involving investigations by the United States or foreign governments.
Throughout his 6 years with his firm, Nick maintained a strong commitment to
his pro bono practice. Among many other pro bono matters, Nick successfully
represented an apostate from the Middle East, who faced deportation to and
execution in his native Sudan for the crime of converting away from Islam,
winning him asylum in the United States. He also worked with mentally ill New
Yorkers to ensure adequate provision of state resources enabling patients to
leave institutions and safely and productively live in the community;
represented hearing disabled citizens in their efforts to ensure local
hospitals provided sign language interpreters as required by the Americans With
Disabilities Act; and represented individuals in complaints of malpractice
against the D.C. Metropolitan Police.

When his law
firm closed, Nick took the opportunity to focus his legal attention on
constitutional issues and joined CFI. In addition to working on CFI’s internal
legal matters, Nick has worked alone and with others in the secular community
to seek to preserve a strict separation of Church and State. Recently, Nick
wrote an amicus brief for the Supreme Court defending the contraceptive mandate
in the Affordable Care Act, and is working with local counsel in Florida on a
case seeking to enforce that state’s constitutional ban on spending tax payer
revenues on clearly sectarian, religion based, half-way houses for released
prisoners. CFI’s legal department is currently considering involvement in cases
regarding many different matters, including further litigation regarding the
Affordable Care Act, the attacks on reproductive rights of women in many
states, same sex marriage and LGBTQ rights, end of life and euthanasia matters,
and the regulation of homeopathic and other pseudo medications. Nick is always
seeking cases in which CFI can involve itself, either as an amicus in an
existing matter, or directly representing a plaintiff.